The Art of Deception b-8

by Ridley Pearson

  Focused as she was, she didn’t see the group of four street punks until she was nearly upon them. Huddled together under the overhang of the garage’s next level, they looked over at her with hollow eyes-hollow heads, was more like it-the pungent odor of pot hanging in the air.

  The patrol car sped by on her right. She looked out, but too late.

  One of the bigger boys in the group came out toward her from between the parked cars. “What are you looking at?”

  She debated displaying her shield but decided against it. Kids like this held a particular dislike for authority. In doing so she experienced what must have been a defenseless civilian’s panic.

  But if high on pot, they didn’t represent much threat of violence, no matter what the posturing. It didn’t fit the model. If the pot were an attempt at a comedown from an amphetamine high, though, she had problems. Her volunteer work at the Shelter had not gone for naught.

  Another of the young toughs, this one with peroxide hair and a face that held enough piercings to set off an airport security check, followed on the heels of his friend. “She’s fine-looking, eh, Manny?” The kid coughed and spat, the phlegm attaching to the car he passed.

  Matthews stood her ground. “There was a man up here. Up there,” she said, pointing to level two. “Just now. Maybe six feet tall, looking west. Maybe in a sweatshirt and jeans, maybe a uniform.”

  “Take it somewhere else,” the bigger one said, but his eyes had locked onto her purse.

  “She is damn fine,” the kid with the dye job whispered to his buddy, encouraging him forward, defining his own interest in Matthews.

  “Did you see a patrol car? King County Sheriff’s?”

  “Yeah, right,” replied the leader sarcastically.

  “Up there on level two,” she said.

  “There’s four of us, lady.” He stepped out from between the cars, now only a few feet from her.

  Where was that sheriff’s car now that she needed it? This south end of town was rough at night-the very reason the Shelter was no more than a block away. Some of these hotheads carried weapons; she didn’t want that in the equation. Bribery, on the other hand, had its place. “Twenty bucks answers my question.” She tried to put his attention on her purse out of her mind, not wanting to see him as a criminal but instead as a source of information. If the blond kid wanted to try his doped-up luck at groping her, the purse carried a Beretta, a can of Mace, a single pair of handcuffs, a mobile phone, and a Palm Pilot. Connecting that purse to the side of his face would put the kid in the next county. Reaching into the purse, grabbing hold of the weapon, chambering a round-all that would probably take ten seconds that she wouldn’t have.

  “Didn’t see no cruiser,” the leader said, “but maybe the uniform, yeah. How ’bout that twenty?”

  The option presented itself for her to grab the gun while pretending to retrieve the twenty, though it upped the stakes considerably. She had no intention of shooting some stoned kid, nor of provoking the remaining three to fire on her.

  She asked, “What color uniform?” This question would separate fact from fiction. Blue for SPD. Dark brown khaki for KCSO.

  “Army maybe.” The kid took another step closer.

  She found his answer intriguing, for if he’d believed a khaki uniform meant an army officer, it added credibility to why he and his pals hadn’t fled, whereas a blue uniform would strike the fear of God into any one of these kids. But khaki was more likely King County Sheriff, not army.

  Evaluating her situation came down to mapping an exit route.

  She felt confident she could outrun any one of these kids. The problem was that this leader stood between her and the exit. The only ramp available to her led up and into the garage. Cars streamed around this parking garage, their lights glinting like those of a carousel. So many people, so incredibly close by, and yet oblivious to her predicament. Her extreme isolation-one against many, alone and yet surrounded-bore down on her.

  “What color shirt?” she asked.

  “What about that twenty?”

  She faced a choice then-her gun or the payoff? She clicked open her purse, and for a moment the sounds of the city surrendered to the intense drumming in her ears. She drew a twenty from her wallet, keeping her hands hidden behind the screen of her purse. There lay her gun. On the bottom of everything was the small can of pepper spray, a far more reasonable means of defense given the threat. She made one stab for it-fingers dart-ing through the contents of the purse-and by an act of divine intervention, she touched the can’s cold metal and drew the Mace from her purse, her hand concealing it.

  They all heard the car enter from the other side of the building, saw the spread of its headlights as shadows crawled across the stained concrete. During this brief distraction, Matthews placed the twenty at her feet and, cradling the pepper spray, turned and walked toward the ramp that led to level two. She heard the big kid hurry to retrieve the money, the scratching of the soles of his boots on the concrete. She sensed the other kid’s bold advance as he tested the possibility of following her, maybe scoring a little payoff of his own-maybe money, maybe something else.

  “Dude!” the big one called out as the headlights swung to encompass them all.

  Matthews hurried then, not running, not wanting to signal her fear, up the ramp and straight toward her Honda. The lights flashed and the horn beeped behind the signal from her remote button.

  She wondered what the message was, as she bumped the Honda out into the busy street, like stepping through a stage curtain and walking into the audience. She searched for significance in every incident, every encounter she experienced, the psychologist seizing upon every opportunity to learn something about herself.

  In the process, she nearly forgot about the man in the khaki uniform overlooking the Shelter’s parking lot. Nearly, but not quite.

  Old Friends, New Enemies

  “You want peepers? We got peepers. But I gotta tell you, Johno: Your guys have been through these already, because of Hebringer and Randolf.” Marisha Stenolovski slid a file cabinet drawer open. The files went back twelve or fifteen inches.

  Stenolovski stuck out a few inches in all the right places herself. He’d been there, done that.

  “Last thirty days. I’ll know it when I see it.”

  It had been a year earlier. A cop bar. Both of them flirting a little too openly. She stood a good three inches taller than he.

  Lanky. Dark Slavic skin, brooding eyes. A screamer-he remembered that as well. It had lasted a week or two. He’d dumped her for someone, no doubt. Couldn’t remember for whom just now. The problem with relationships at work, they came back to bite you.

  She lowered her voice. “You’re an asshole, John. Until you need my help, you don’t give me the time of day. What am I, damaged goods? Leftovers? I don’t care that you leave me for some singer. Good riddance. But the way you avoid me now.

  It’s disrespectful.”

  The singer. He remembered now. “I don’t avoid you.”

  “Have we said two words in the last six months?”

  “A woman got peeped over at the Inn. I’m looking for similar complaints.”

  She slapped the steel file drawer. “There. All the peepers a guy could ask for. Look hard, Johnny. Maybe you’re in there too.”

  She walked off. He remembered that walk. Strong. Alluring.

  Legs to the moon. One foot placed exactly in front of the other, like a runway model, so her butt shifted back and forth like a pair of puppies in a paper sack. She’d donned a pair of his boxer shorts one morning. Topless, just the boxer shorts, nothing else.

  They ate bagels together at the kitchen table, her, dressed that way. He remembered more about her than he might have thought.

  It shouldn’t have surprised him that the one case file that interested him turned out to have Stenolovski’s name listed as the investigator. Life was like that. He should have known, because there were only a couple full-eights in Special Assaults-SA. The res
t worked it part-time.

  He caught up to her as she sat atop a metal stool in an office cubicle covered with magazine tear sheets of barefoot water skiers. A photo of a nephew. Another of Prague or Moscow, someplace gray, bleak with billboard ads he didn’t recognize.

  Definitely Eastern European. In the photo she had her arm around a very old lady with hair the color of winter clouds.

  He cleared his throat. “With me, you get what you get. Sometimes that’s a good thing. Sometimes not. If you’re pissed, you’re pissed. But if I apologized, it would be wrong because it would be insincere. I’m not sorry for any of it, anything we had, except that since then maybe I’ve treated you wrong.”

  She smiled, “So pull up a chair, asshole.”

  He smiled back. “Yeah. Thanks.”

  “Ms. Tina Oblitz?” The phone cradled between his shoulder and ear, LaMoia was guessing that the Oblitz file had been passed over during the Hebringer/Randolf race for lack of what his department called “connective tissue” because Oblitz herself had tried to withdraw the complaint. That sticky note in the file would have tainted it-why further investigate something that “didn’t happen”?-but it was just this Post-it that intrigued John LaMoia.

  “This is she.”

  LaMoia introduced himself by rank and awaited the mandatory pause of shock value. Telephones weren’t the greatest.

  His beeper chirped and he yanked it off his belt, wondering if Rehab was bugging the neighbors. The dog had attached himself to LaMoia and reportedly would wail hours on end when LaMoia was off on night duty. No such problem during the day shifts. The dog needed a shrink. Maybe Matthews would give it a spin.

  He recognized the phone number on the pager as the ME’s-Dixon must have completed the autopsy on Mary-Ann Walker.

  “Yes, Sergeant?” Tentative. Cautious.

  “You recently filed a voyeurism complaint with us. Then you called back to attempt to retract the complaint.”

  “It was nothing. I was mistaken.”

  “And we,” he continued, as if uninterrupted, “Detective Stenolovski, actually, informed you that once filed, a complaint cannot be retracted.”

  “It’s fine. It’s nothing.”

  “It’s not fine with me, Ms. Oblitz. I’ve got a case I’m working, a stalking, voyeurism. I’ve just been reviewing a similar case file. From your initial complaint, I’m thinking our current case might be the same guy who was watching you.”

  “No one was watching me, Sergeant. I was mistaken.”

  “If there’s blackmail involved, extortion, then I can help with that, Ms. Oblitz.”

  “It’s nothing like that.”

  “Then what is it like?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Stenolovski says the initial complaint was quite convincing.

  You saw this guy out your hotel window. That’s important to me, Ms. Oblitz. Then you call to distance yourself. Suddenly you don’t want anything to do with it. I’ve got to ask myself: Is it because you’re afraid? Have you been threatened? Extorted?

  I need to know about that.”

  “It’s not that … it’s just that I was mistaken.”

  “Okay, so I’m wrong. I still got to talk to you, Ms. Oblitz, about that original complaint. A woman’s gone through something awful-two others have gone missing-and I think you may be able to help me with this. I think you know what she’s going through.”

  A long pause. He could hear her breathing. “Not now. Not over the phone.”

  LaMoia experienced a great sense of victory. He closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath, and combed his free hand through his hair. “Okay. Thank you. So when? Where?” He added, “You’re in … the Bay Area. It’s going to have to be by phone, I’m afraid.”

  “I’m traveling up there on business, Monday. I’m in the W.”

  “Name a time,” he said.

  She asked him to wait a minute. “I have an opening at four.

  Four to five. Will that suit you?”

  “Four o’clock. Fine.”

  “Whatever you do, don’t announce yourself at the desk, would you not, Sergeant? Just call up to the room, please.”

  “Done.” He hung up the phone with a smile. He owned Ms.

  Tina Oblitz. She just didn’t know it yet.

  The Discovery Process

  “Bernie Lofgrin typed the blood on that sweatshirt your boyfriend delivered,” LaMoia explained to Matthews. “It matches Mary-Ann Walker’s. They’re running DNA now. Meanwhile we’re here for a little chat.”

  “SID?” she asked. “We’re going to search his apartment, right?”

  “If he lets us in, we get a plain-sight search,” LaMoia answered. “But for anything more than that, we’ll need a court order, and for that Mahoney wants a print or prints developed on the sweatshirt, some hairs other than Mary-Ann’s, a second blood type, semen … something to bring Neal into the picture with physical evidence.”

  “And the lab?”

  “Is working on it.” He added, “Call me reckless-I don’t feel like waiting another twenty-four hours on this.”

  “And I’m along because?” she asked.

  “Because I like you, Matthews. Why else?”

  She felt herself blush and tried to cover it by saying, “Gee, John, you’ve got me all feverish.”

  “That’s the idea,” he said. “We’ll cool off with a drink later.”

  “Don’t count on it,” she said, though it didn’t sound so bad.

  LaMoia? she asked herself. Who was she kidding?

  “Because you see things the rest of us don’t,” he said, answering her original question. “And because someone has to keep an eye on him while I inspect his car.” He allowed this to sink in. “She was sitting up facing a car when she was hit, not standing, not running away. Dixie can prove that. If not the sweatshirt, maybe Neal’s car. The point being something is going to win SID a ticket into Neal’s apartment, and I’ll take it however we can get it.”

  He gave her one of his high-voltage smiles as he used a credit card to trick open the lock on the apartment house’s street-side door.

  The dark stairwell smelled sour, of spilled beer and wine, tobacco and other things in various states of organic decompo-sition that she didn’t want to think about-street sex and in-travenous drug use, and always that tinge of the sea. These combined with an odor that she took to be poisoned mice or water rats entombed in the walls in various stages of silent decay.

  “Should we have maybe called for backup?” she asked in a forced whisper.

  “We’re fine,” LaMoia said, climbing the stairs two at a time and reaching inside his jacket for his handgun as he got to the landing.

  It didn’t feel all that “fine” to her, and she nearly said so.

  “You didn’t have to come,” he said.

  “Then why’d you ask me along? What the hell, John: These aren’t even my hours.”

  “Because I knew if I didn’t you’d be all moody about being left out.” This irritated her-not the comment, but the fact that he had her dead to rights. “I asked you because I knew you had nothing better to do tonight, and I thought you might enjoy seeing me take this guy down.”

  “Seeing you take him down,” she restated. “So I’m what, your audience?”

  “It’s not like that and you know it.”

  “What is it like, John?” she whispered. They stood outside the apartment number listed on LaMoia’s slip of paper. She was angry now. Angrier still that she allowed it to show.

  He met eyes with her and whispered back, “I like your company, Matthews. You’re smart, you’re clever, and like I said, you see things in shit-balls like Neal that the rest of us miss. A case like this … maybe we find evidence, maybe we don’t. And if we don’t, the evidence may boil down to this guy’s behavior.

  His reactions. Am I right? And who better than you to sit up on that witness stand and charm the shorts off a jury to where they buy a collection of circumstantial evidence that p
ins him as capable of anything, including lying.”

  LaMoia reached up and rapped his knuckles on the door. He indicated for her to step back, and he readied the weapon before him.

  She understood then that the pistol was nothing more than posturing on LaMoia’s part-he wanted to scare Neal with this entrance, to establish a degree of distrust that would set the tone for the interview to come. She admired him for this gut instinct of his; sometimes she wondered who, of the two of them, understood human behavior better.

  “Who is it?” Neal asked through the door.

  “Sergeant LaMoia and Lieutenant Matthews, Mr. Neal.”

  The man opened the apartment door with none of the reluctance or hesitation that Matthews might have expected of the guilty, and she took note of this. Such cocksure confidence could be its own telltale, its own undoing for a rare breed of suspect.

  The door opened into a room dominated by a large worn couch covered in an unpleasant green cotton that looked more like a bedspread, a wooden chair facing it, and a coffee table with badly scratched veneer that clearly doubled as a footrest.

  A shabby, aluminum card table that belonged in an Airstream trailer held two empty beer bottles and a pair of disposable picnic containers of salt and pepper. The table was situated in front of a large double-hung window. Its jamb and sill pockmarked by a dozen coats of poorly applied paint, it looked out onto a black metal fire escape and beyond, an unexpectedly impressive view of Lake Union. Finding the one-man kitchen neat and clean surprised her. She would have expected Neal incapable of house-keeping. A plain-sight search of the small bedroom revealed the television he’d mentioned previously as well as a second window access out onto the fire escape, also part of his earlier statement. At least in his description of the place, his earlier statement held up.